


Breathe Deep Like You Mean It

by fenellaevangela



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, F/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 00:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3466961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenellaevangela/pseuds/fenellaevangela





	Breathe Deep Like You Mean It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/gifts).



Starting a relationship with Raleigh was nothing; it was as easy as taking a breath. _Breathe_ , she imagined him begging her, as they slipped into the Anteverse. _Breathe_ , she remembered pleading, as he floated like death on the ocean. But in the end they both breathed and in the end they came together as easily as if they had always been. Mako knew the stories as well as anyone, of course; ever since the very first neural handshake, people had claimed that drift compatibility was a shorthand for romance and sex and friendship all rolled into one. For soulmates, to the more poetically-minded. Even feeling Raleigh, in her mind and under her hands, didn't convince Mako of soulmates, but there was certainly a beauty in not having to fumble with something so inelegant as _words_ to find out that a person complements you.

Starting a relationship with Herc Hansen was nothing like with Raleigh, nothing at all. Words were the only thing Herc and Mako and Raleigh had between them, once the kaiju and Stacker and Chuck were all gone. 

Mako and Raleigh invited Herc along with them when they were finally comfortable taking leave from the rebranded PPDC. Now the Pan Pacific Recovery Initiative, the organization still needed people like Mako Mori and Herc Hansen and Raleigh Becket - but it could spare them, for a time.

"You don't need an old man hitching along on your first real time together," Herc had said. Mako thought she heard an echo behind his words, something like _I don't need your pity_ , something that he didn't want to say out loud.

"We would not ask you unless we meant it," Mako had told him. When she glanced at Raleigh, he nodded.

Herc had shaken his head in response. "I don't want to be in your way," he said, but it sounded like _I don't want to be alone when you're together_.

Words were so indelicate, words were so imperfect. Mako reached out and gripped Herc's arm lightly but firmly; she smiled and knew Raleigh was smiling next to her.

"You could never be in our way," she said. "Come with us."

Starting a relationship with Herc wasn't nothing; it was as hard as waking up every morning, as making it through each day, as navigating needs and desires of three people who had each felt loss before. But in the end they found their balance and the three of them came together, spoke together, breathed together.

  



End file.
